On Feb 10, 2011, at 10:51 AM, Giovanni Mascellani wrote: > On 09/02/2011 12:25, Stefane Fermigier wrote: >> 2. sometimes the policies need to be changed in the face of reality. >> Otherwise, we end up like these poor monkeys: >> >> http://freekvermeulen.blogspot.com/2008/08/monkey-story-experiment-involved-5.html > > Well, I don't think this story is appropriate here: I'm not defending > the policy because it's the policy; I'm defending it because I think it > tells how to do things in the saner way I'm able to think of (embedded > copies and sourceless builds, in this case; did I miss anything?).
"Saner", yes, but also (practically) *impossible*. Practicality beats purity: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ > Anyway, as has already been said, changing the policy is a big thing: > you can try to convince us why it would be a good thing (and, in my > case, you're failing; don't know about other DDs), but then the change > has to pass through much harder discussions. Obviously you're not in the target market for enterprise applications, so I can understand why you're not interested in having well done and supported Debian packages for JBoss, Nuxeo, XWiki, OfBiz, Adempiere, Lifreay, eXo, etc. > >>> What is not true? The fact that packaging things in Debian is >>> difficult or the fact that it's so because it requires some added >>> value? >> >> No, the fact that it *only* requires "some" added value. >> >> You are requiring *much more*. You are requiring upstream developers >> to *completely change* their development process, dropping maven to >> use some non-existing tool, renouncing their QA process, etc. > > I think this mainly depends on the fact that these projects are using a > development model which has many problems: the main one is the fact that > they decide to support the compilation against only a specific version > of each library. In my opinion, this is a bad thing: libraries should > been stable enough not to have these problems; They should, but they aren't. There's the reality principle here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_principle > bugfix releases shouldn't > do other than fix bugs, shouldn't introduce new depencies; minor > releases should ensure backward compatibility nevertheless. They don't. We have to live with that. > Moreover, I'm not saying that Debian doesn't want to package your > software; I'm just saying that we don't seem to have enough manpower to > do it. This may change in the future. This is not a question of manpower, this is a question of attitude and policy. > In the meantime, the solution > proposed by Torsten could address some of the problems; certainly, it > wouldn't reduce the manpower needed. > >> I'm also fed up with private apt repositories that only work with an >> obsolete version of Debian (or Ubuntu). > > Well, here the key is to keep that repository up-to-date. If you're > managing it, it's definitely you're responsibility. :-) We're doing our job. Others don't, so people don't have confidence in these private repos. >> BTW, here's what geogebra's download page >> (http://www.geogebra.org/cms/en/download) says: "You are free to >> copy, distribute and transmit GeoGebra for non-commercial purposes". >> >> Isn't this a flagrant violation of the DFSG (Item 6, "No >> Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor") ? > > Wasn't the first thing I said about geogebra that I was proud to have > made it free software, while before it wasn't? It's free software that advertises itself as non free. What a shame! S. -- Stefane Fermigier, Founder and Chairman, Nuxeo Open Source, Java EE based, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) http://www.nuxeo.com/ - +33 1 40 33 79 87 - http://twitter.com/sfermigier Join the Nuxeo Group on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/groups?gid=43314 New Nuxeo release: http://nuxeo.com/dm54 "There's no such thing as can't. You always have a choice." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-java-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/38ab6b19-229c-4920-bbab-d57cad2b2...@nuxeo.com
